“Together, we will create amazing user experiences,’’ Page wrote on the company blog.
The acquisition has a strategic goal, as well: to protect Google and its Android software for smartphones and tablets against a host of costly patent lawsuits filed by its rivals. Motorola holds thousands of patents, which now will be owned by Google, giving the search giant a stronger hand in court. Android products are “under threat from some companies who are looking to use patents to compete,’’ said David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer.
Google expects the deal to be finalized by the end of 2011 or early 2012, after review by antitrust regulators in the United States, the European Union, and other countries.
Motorola Inc., founded in 1928 in Chicago, developed the world’s first commercial cellphone service in 1983. Motorola Mobility, its mobile phone operation, was spun off as a separate company in January.
Android began as the product of a Silicon Valley start-up company with a software development facility in Cambridge. The company was purchased by Google in 2005, and the software has become the world’s most popular platform for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Every major US carrier and 231 wireless providers around the world sell Android devices.
As a result, sales of Android devices far outstrip those for the iPhone and iPad, which run Apple’s iOS software.
Page said yesterday that more than 150 million Android-based phones and tablets have been activated, with 550,000 coming online every day.
The research firm Gartner Inc. estimates Android has 38.5 percent of the worldwide market for mobile device software, compared to 19.4 percent for Apple’s iOS, and by next year Android’s market share will reach nearly 50 percent.
